Quotes About Vulnerability

under the surface there is often ambivalence about women at work that makes their position vulnerable.

Yes, he was an old man but, gosh, those muscled limbs of his, the strength in them. She remembered how vast he had seemed, nude in the little cottage bedroom, like a giant folded up and tucked into a shoebox.

Female castration results in concentration of her feelings upon her male companion, and her impotence in confrontations with her own kind. Because all her love is guided by the search for security, if not for her offspring then for her crippled and fearful self, she cannot expect to find it in her own kind, whom she knows to be weak and unsuitable.

We still make love to organs and not people.

To be a mother, to feel maternally, means to turn especially to the helpless, to incline lovingly and helpfully toward everything on earth that is small and weak. Therefore the principle of motherhood is a dual one. It hinges not only on the birth of the child, but also on fostering and protecting that which has been born.

As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other.

Confessare, anche a se stessi, i propri desideri - quelli veri - è pericoloso. Se sono realizzabili, e spesso lo sono, dichiararli ti mette di fronte alla paura di provarci. E dunque alla tua vigliaccheria. Allora preferisci non pensarci, o pensare che hai desideri impossibili, e che è da adulti non pensare alle cose impossibili.

Ci ho riflettuto molti anni dopo, esaminando la mia grande difficoltà ad accettare aiuto. Sapersela sbrigare da soli è bene. Credere di doversela sbrigare sempre da soli, senza mai chiedere aiuto, è una debolezza travestita da forza. Se non sai chiedere aiuto, di regola non sai nemmeno cosa fare quando ti viene offerto spontaneamente, quando sarebbe morale accettarlo (e immorale rifiutarlo).

Watson in the nineties has been like English cricket in the nineties: an accident waiting to happen.

Crying makes me know I'm still real and still alive.

He was a sensitive man and many people had caused him anguish.

Brave men are all vertebrates they have their softness on the surface and their toughness in the middle.

I'd much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they are the first to be rescued off of sinking ships.

Not many weapons could relieve a man of his underwear.

the whole art of guerrilla warfare lies in striking the enemy where he least expects it and yet where he is most vulnerable

Well it seems to me that the best relationships-the ones that last-

Friends see most of each other's flaws. Spouses see every awful last bit.

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

There is no democracy in any love relation: only mercy.

To grow in love-ability is to accept the boundaries of oneself and others, while remaining vulnerable, woundable, around the bounds. Acknowledgement of conditionality is the only unconditionality of human love.

You should know by now that love is never a weakness, Ares. Love is the mortal world's greatest strength.

grief is not a thing that ends. Sometimes, though, it cracks us open and exposes the places we've hidden, and that can be a kind of gift.

What does it mean to love by degree? What does this say, too, about my place in my own children's love chain? Is this the cycle of life, then? To be prepared to be thrown under the bus, if necessary, by those you value most in the world?

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?" Muriel Rukeyser wrote in 1968, the year of my birth. "The world would split open.